About Me

By day, I perform strategic marketing duties for MorphoTrak (a subsidiary of Morpho, a subsidiary of Safran). By night, I manage the Empoprises blogging empire, as well as various virtual properties in Starfleet Commander and other games. Formerly known as Ontario Emperor (Ontario California, not Ontario Canada). LCMS Lutheran. Former member of Radio Shack Battery Club. Motorola Yellow Badge recipient. Top 10% of LinkedIn users.

Friday, November 12, 2010

I talk about call centers a lot in my Empoprise-BI business blog, but not so much on this Inland Empire-focused blog. One major center was an August 19 post which talked about the closure of a Hilton call center in Hemet, and the transfer of the employees' duties to the Philippines.

That closure affected nearly 300 employees. But not all call centers are that large. In fact, the Riverside Press-Enterprise recently interviewed the heads of a much smaller call center, the nearly 50 employee Professional Communications Network. And in a world in which we commonly talk about call centers in the Philippines or India, it's interesting to hear the views of a company which concentrates on a much smaller geographic area.

There's less mom-and-pop answering services ... Technology has really allowed for that, because when we started it was very expensive for us to handle calls in Malibu, Los Angeles, Long Beach from Riverside or from Los Angeles just because of mileage. You used to have to pay a lot of mileage just to get the calls here. And now with technology we can cover all of Southern California ... and it's next to nothing.

But wouldn't it be cheaper to have staff in Manila or Omaha?

With a lot of our medical especially, I think they feel comfortable being in Southern California having somebody in Southern California answer it. I don't think they're excited about having their patients answered by somebody in New York ... Our clients want us to be able to answer questions and understand a little bit about what they do.

I talk about call centers a lot in my Empoprise-BI business blog, but not so much on this Inland Empire-focused blog. One major center was an August 19 post which talked about the closure of a Hilton call center in Hemet, and the transfer of the employees' duties to the Philippines.

That closure affected nearly 300 employees. But not all call centers are that large. In fact, the Riverside Press-Enterprise recently interviewed the heads of a much smaller call center, the nearly 50 employee Professional Communications Network. And in a world in which we commonly talk about call centers in the Philippines or India, it's interesting to hear the views of a company which concentrates on a much smaller geographic area.

There's less mom-and-pop answering services ... Technology has really allowed for that, because when we started it was very expensive for us to handle calls in Malibu, Los Angeles, Long Beach from Riverside or from Los Angeles just because of mileage. You used to have to pay a lot of mileage just to get the calls here. And now with technology we can cover all of Southern California ... and it's next to nothing.

But wouldn't it be cheaper to have staff in Manila or Omaha?

With a lot of our medical especially, I think they feel comfortable being in Southern California having somebody in Southern California answer it. I don't think they're excited about having their patients answered by somebody in New York ... Our clients want us to be able to answer questions and understand a little bit about what they do.